


Doggone Luck

by tepidspongebath



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: (I think it's magical realism - correct me if I'm wrong), (Slightly), Case Fic, First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:06:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24382528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tepidspongebath/pseuds/tepidspongebath
Summary: After a run-in with a mirror, John Watson has been having alarmingly bad luck.Sherlock tries to find a way to cure him of it.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 30
Kudos: 116
Collections: Holmestice Exchange - Summer 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dryad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dryad/gifts).



> For [dryadinthegrove](https://dryadinthegrove.dreamwidth.org/). This was written while heavily under the influence of _The Goldberg Variation_ episode of The X-Files. I hope you like it! 
> 
> Also, huge thanks to my IRL friend who read this through and helped me wrestle the plot into shape because I have forgotten how to fic.

“You can’t solve every case, Sherlock.”

“I damn well solved this one,” snarled Sherlock, turning on his heel to glare at John, filling the doorway of 221B Baker Street with sullen menace.

John knew better than to rise to the bait, but he was footsore and tired and badly wanted to lie down. “Well, then you can’t single-handedly catch every criminal. Some things _can_ be left to the police.”

“I wasn’t single-handed, I had _you_. You shouldn’t have stopped me.”

That was too much for John. “If I hadn’t ‘stopped’ you, you would have lost your head - literally lost your head! And that bloody big brain you’re so proud of would be rattling around a specimen jar in Molly Hooper’s lab!”

“Maria Gibson got away. There was no reason for that.”

“No reason? I’d say staying alive was reason enough.”

“Staying–” Sherlock stopped mid-retort, distracted by something on the hand John was pointing angrily at him. “John. You’re bleeding.”

John looked. He hadn’t even noticed the network of small cuts on his left hand, and, in the manner of small cuts, it only started to smart now that he knew it was there.

“Ah, shit. Must be from that damn mirror I fell into. That’s what comes of charging around a mad woman’s antique shop. That and the battle axe she had rigged over the exit.” He sighed. “Look, Sherlock, I don’t want to argue. I’m sorry she escaped, but I’m happier knowing that your head’s still on your shoulders. And I need to wash up.”

“Don’t you dare blog about this one.”

“I wasn’t planning to! Fuck – no, not you, I just stubbed my toe on the door frame, that’s all.”

*

In the bathroom, John examined the back of his hand with – well, not with concern, he wouldn’t say he was _concerned_ about so small a thing, but he studied it with some measure of curiosity. Remembering how he’d fallen against that mirror – a huge ugly thing, small wonder it was propped up against the wall in the back room of a shoddy antique shop – as he’d pulled Sherlock away from the swinging axe, he wasn’t surprised he was hurt. Given the size of the mirror, he supposed it was a wonder that the injury wasn’t graver.

But though the blood had washed away easily enough, the pattern remained on his skin in faint inky lines that soap and water couldn’t budge. And that was even before he’d dabbed a bit of povidone-iodine on it.

What were old mirrors made of anyway? He vaguely knew about the silver lining, but he wasn’t sure if mirror-makers in years past had used things he should be worried about. Lead and mercury and such.

He had just decided to ask someone at the surgery to take a closer look at it when he knocked over the bottle of iodine – the last one he had, since they weren’t selling the stuff anymore – spilling its contents all over the floor.

It was a bitch to clean up. Sherlock, after peeking in to see why John cursing up a storm, turned up with a bowl of warm, sudsy water with a splash of ammonia in it, but that was all he offered in the way of help before stalking back to the kitchen. He was probably still cross about the Maria Gibson affair. And John was nowhere near brave enough to tell him to stop being cross, damn it, because that would lead to admitting that all the leaping in front of axes and diving into great sodding mirrors was because he was head over heels in love with the man. 

He couldn’t manage to get all the stains out of the grout, no matter how hard he scrubbed.

*

His whole body ached the next day, reminding John in no uncertain terms that he was no longer twenty and couldn’t charge around all night without paying for it in the morning, no matter how much coffee he drank. Having to crouch down to clean the bathroom tiles hadn’t helped either – his knees twinged like nobody’s business. And those marks were still on his hand. Sarah couldn’t make anything of it (they were barely even scabs, but they were _there_ ) and suggested antibiotic ointment as a precaution.

He also somehow lost his Oyster card on the Tube on his way home. _Of course_ security would pay attention just when he’d given up on finding it and was about to jump the turnstiles. He had a hell of a time explaining that no, he wasn’t dodging the fare, he’d _paid_ the damn fare – had just topped up his card the other day, in fact, and he’d swiped the damn thing at the station he started from – and, no, he didn’t have the bloody app, he just wanted to go home.

It was the start of a very bad week.


	2. Chapter 2

John Watson did not have the best of luck. Sherlock had noticed (of course) that he was the sort of person who was guaranteed to be caught in a downpour on the one day he looked up at the sky and decided that, no, he did not need an umbrella today. (So was Mycroft, but _he_ circumvented this by carrying an umbrella at all times.) This wasn’t unusual in itself. Mostly, it meant that he could be relied upon to lose a coin toss or manage to pick the _one_ wonky chip and pin machine at Tesco on a fairly regular basis.

He was only human, after all.

But the week following Maria Gibson’s escape saw him blundering into one minor misfortune after another at a truly alarming rate. There was such a long litany of nicked fingers, barked shins and small items misplaced precisely when they were needed that Sherlock was forced to admit (only to himself, and certainly never aloud) that he was relieved they didn’t have a case. The things that could happen to John if the Browning happened to slip from his fingers at an inopportune moment did not bear thinking about.

Being Sherlock, however, he did think about it. Specifically, he thought about how things could have ended very differently if John had been having his current streak of bad luck when they’d gone to confront Maria Gibson (Sherlock said ‘confront’; John said ‘breaking and entering and hoping Lestrade still likes us enough to stop us being arrested if we get caught’). Given the quality of the clutter in that antique shop, he probably would have gotten much worse than those cuts on the back of his hand.

Which, Sherlock noticed, had not faded. The broken-glass pattern had, in fact, gotten darker over the past few days, despite John’s religious cleaning and applications of an antibiotic ointment (though he’d gone a couple of days before realizing that the first tube of ointment had expired in June of last year). And John’s luck had only gotten worse since then. Since he’d broken that mirror, now that he came to think of it, and broken mirrors did have a reputation for going hand-in-hand with misfortune...

This was worrisome. Sherlock didn’t like to follow that line of reasoning in real life. It tended to interfere with the Work, because the answers came too easily: there was a curse, he hexed her, she put a spell on them – not entirely outside the realm of possibility, but far rarer than the way the words were thrown around would suggest, and annoyingly difficult to pin down with a tidy trail of admissible evidence. He had no _proof_ that John had cut his thumb while slicing tomatoes because something supernatural was at work.

Sherlock began to suspect it, however, when John came home from work with a lump on his forehead from having hit it on the lintel of a door. The sheer number of odds that had to come into play for that to happen _to a man of John’s height_ was mind-boggling, step stools or no step stools.

Then he moved from _suspicious_ to _concerned_ when the Indian takeaway place not only got John’s order wrong, but also gave him a dish containing the one vegetable he was allergic to ( _Colocasia esculenta_ – John could eat the tubers without any ill effects, but the leaves left him covered in hives and swollen around the mouth). Sherlock might have been able to give the matter more thought at the time if he hadn't been occupied with rushing out for an antihistamine because all they had in the flat was some Benadryl from 2011, and the subsequent guilt that came from having picked up diphenhydramine instead of cetirizine _(him! picking up the wrong box! him!)_ thus knocking John out for the night and causing him to be late for work the next morning. 

But he knew it for certain when John came home from a night out much, much later than expected, soaked to the skin, dirt-stained and with his right sleeve jaggedly torn from shoulder to elbow. He was also slightly favoring one leg, as he still did when he was extremely tired, and the marks on his left hand stood out dark against his clammy skin.

Sherlock met him with a towel before he’d gotten two steps into the flat. The deductions about John, which normally came so easily to him, blurred and meshed together and covered themselves in frantic exclamation marks. He had to settle for asking instead, “What the hell happened to you?”

“For starters, my football team lost.” John took the towel, then seemed at a loss for where to begin drying himself off. His shoes squelched as he shifted his weight. “Not surprising really, they’re having a shite season, but of course they had to lose the one match I tried to watch live.”

“And what else? Did you start a riot at the pub?”

“No, can't you tell? I was mugged.”

“John!”

“Well, I say ‘mugged’. Bill was right behind me, so the bloke didn’t do any real damage. He ran off before I could throw him my wallet. _This_ was the train.”

“ _The train?”_

“Yes, the train. See, I got held up long enough that the damn train was about to pull out of the station when I got to the platform. I knew I wasn’t going to make it, but I tried to make a run for it anyway, and I swear I stopped before the yellow line. I did. I fucking stopped. But some arsehole left a candy bar wrapper on the platform, and I tread on it and lost my balance.”

“Cadbury's Fruit 'n' Nut.”

"How did you--?"

"It's stuck to the bottom of your shoe."

“Ah, right. Anyway, the doors were closing, my sleeve got caught in the doors” –John raised his right arm, displaying Exhibit A: One Tattered Sleeve– “and here I am.”

“They didn’t stop for you?”

“Ha!” John rubbed the arm with the intact sleeve. He must have fallen hard on that one, and it was his bad side too. “I pulled free before it _really_ started going. It’s just a shame that I liked this shirt. And I figured I’d had enough of the Tube by then, but I couldn’t get a cab. Or an Uber. So I walked home. In the rain.”

“You could have called me.”

“What would you have done? Met me halfway with an umbrella?” John sank into his chair and grimaced when the end of a spring dug into his thigh. “Fuck me, I need a shower. I’m just glad I don’t have to go to work tomorrow. It’s been one of those days when nothing goes right, and I can’t shake the feeling that tomorrow won’t be any better.”

Sherlock couldn’t shake the feeling either.


	3. Chapter 3

In the shower, John scrubbed at the back of his left hand again. The actual wounds had healed, but the marks were still there, almost like a tattoo. He flexed his fingers, blinking at them through the running water. It wasn’t infected, he knew that, but he was damned if he could say anything else about it, despite a medical degree and years of practice on and off the battlefield. 

He had just decided that he had bigger problems to worry about – namely the bad fall he'd taken on his injured shoulder – when he slipped on the soap.

*

“John? John are you all right?”

John tried to say he was fine, thanks very much for asking, but the bits of his brain that were quicker on the uptake began to point out details that showed he was not fine at all.

Firstly, he was, for lack of a better word, sprawled in the tub, and Sherlock was holding him partially upright with one large hand situated awkwardly under his armpit.

Secondly, the back of his head hurt almost but not quite where the fingers of Sherlock’s other hand were gently probing through his hair.

Thirdly, Sherlock was drenched from the shower, which was starting to run cold.

Fourthly, he, John, was naked.

This was a scenario straight out of his dirtier fantasies. To have it happen in real life without his active participation or consent was mortifying. The sharp pain at the back of his head – where, ouch, yes, Sherlock had found the spot now – was also unwelcome.

He tried again and managed to say, “Ngrh.”

This made Sherlock lean in closer, near enough for John to feel his breath warm on his face. Suddenly terrified that this was happening while he had absolutely _nothing_ to hide behind, John made an effort to sit up. Sherlock tightened his grip with one hand and moved the other between John’s shoulder blades to help him.

“I’m okay.” John briefly considered covering himself with his hands, but figured that frantically seeking coverage now would make them both acutely aware of the exact degree of nakedness of one ex-army doctor. He braced his hands against the sides of the tub and brought his knees up as a compromise. “I think. Ow.”

“You weren’t out for long – I came in directly after I heard you fall.”

Beyond Sherlock’s shoulder, John could see that the door to the first floor bedroom was open. He must have heard the thump as he was changing, going by how he had one bare foot and one still in its sock. “’Course you did. Thanks. Would you mind turning the water off? Thanks.”

“I take it you trod on the bar of soap?”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” John shivered. It had very little to do with how he was wet in a cold room and much more to do with Sherlock’s hand still resting on his back, directly on his skin. "What a fucking night it's been."

“Need a hand getting out of there?”

John drew his knees closer to his chest in self-defense. “Nah, thanks. But if you could hand me a towel, that’d do the trick.”

“A towel?” Sherlock’s eyes flicked unmistakably downward, and John _did_ cover his crotch with his hands because he couldn’t stand that scrutiny, not with the way his heart was doing an odd little flip in his chest or how he was feeling much too warm in all the wrong places. “Of course.”

Sherlock gave him his towel, and, unasked, a bag of ice cubes wrapped in a dishcloth. He then left John to his own devices, padding back to his room with his damp shirt and trousers clinging wetly to his body.

John stared after him, wondering if he should have said something more. _Nice arse_ would have been accurate but unwelcome. _Please stay_ might have been construed as _Help, I’m an invalid_. And _I think I love you_ could be blamed on the alcohol and the adrenaline, and thus easily dismissed.

He cursed his damn luck.

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

The next morning, Sherlock looked in on John when he heard him moving around in the bathroom ( _clattering by the sink_ – _shaving, will be annoyed when interrupted but not mortified like he’d been in the bath_ – _acceptable_ ).

“Are you okay, John?”

“Maybe knock next time, Sherlock? Yes, I’m fine, just a bit bruised. I think I’m staying put today.”

“Good. Lestrade’s just arrested Maria Gibson. I need to talk to her. Don’t go anywhere, don’t cook, don’t answer the door – don’t do _anything_ until I get back.”

“Jesus, Sherlock, it’s not as bad as all that – fucking fuck, Christ on a bike, _fuck_.”

“Tell me that when you can shave without nicking yourself. I won’t be long. Mind that wet spot behind you.”

*

Lestrade had Maria Gibson waiting for him in an interrogation room, and warned Sherlock that he could have five minutes with her, tops. Sherlock waved this off. With any luck – ha! – five minutes with the murderess would be more than enough.

She shot him a poisonous look as he took the seat opposite her. “You’re that P.I. with the blog. I thought it was you I saw skulking outside my shop. Are you going to ask how I did it?”

“No.” He didn’t bother to correct her about the blog. “I know you killed your husband with a hex and tried to frame his lover for it – what was hard was getting enough mundane evidence for the court case. And Lestrade’s obviously managed that, since he’s been able to hold you.”

Maria sneered. “Not the D.I. That sergeant of his has a nose for witches, even if she doesn’t know it.”

“Ah, yes. Donovan can be inconveniently shrewd.” Sherlock leaned forward and lowered his voice, knowing that Lestrade was listening behind the two-way mirror. “What do you know about luck, Mrs. Gibson?”

“Luck?”

“Yes. Your husband was a stockbroker, and while it’s plausible that an astute understanding of market trends aided his career, I find it hard to believe that he never once suffered a significant loss.”

“You’re wrong. Neil lost a ton of money in ‘05–”

“Not since he married you.”

Maria pressed her lips together in a tight, angry line.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Sherlock allowed himself a half-smile. “There are stories about how an unlucky person can take on someone else’s good fortune. As I understand it, however, this usually works by the unlucky one attributing everything to the other person – _those are her cows, not mine_ and so on. Your husband traded under his name and you ran your antique shop separately, so it must be something else.”

“You’ll have to keep guessing.”

“We broke a mirror the night we were in your shop.” Sherlock watched Maria’s eyes go wide, saw her right shoulder shift ever so slightly as if she meant to slap him then remembered that she couldn’t. “Ah. That _did_ have something to do with it.”

“This is all your fault, then,” she hissed.

“We can hardly take credit for making you murder your husband.”

“That was his fault, for taking up with that tart, Grace Dunbar. After I’d given him everything. I’d have done anything for Neil, but he stopped loving me.”

“Clearly.” Sherlock did not have time for her melodrama. “What happens when you break the mirror?”

“The world fucks me over, as you can see.” Maria raised her wrists so that the handcuffs clinked against the ring holding them to the table.

“What happens to the people who broke it?”

“The standard seven years of bad luck, as far as I know, if you survive that long. Why? Have you been feeling _unlucky_ lately?”

“My...friend is.”

“Oh, so it was him, then? The guy who follows you around? Serve him right for breaking my mirror.”

“How can I make it stop?”

“Listen to you – ‘how can _I_ make it stop’. How badly you need to play the knight in shining armor, Mr. Holmes.”

“Well?”

“Would you believe me if I said true love’s first kiss?”

“No.”

“I don’t blame you. I don’t owe you any kindness, and you know it. But that’s the only answer you’re going to get out of me.”

*

Her laughter followed him as he stalked out of the interrogation room, and it echoed in his ears all the way back to Baker Street.

True love’s first kiss. Ha. Ridiculous. A trite, fairy-tale solution if he’d ever heard one.

But not impossible. That case with Gloria Siddiqui-Scott came to mind, though that was in the early days, when Sherlock had still been figuring things out and it was entirely possible that he’d missed one or two subtleties there. And he was sure it had been posited as a remedy to the madness of Isador Persano, though, to his knowledge, no one had ever _tried_. Obviously, nobody had been fond of the man.

Of equal importance was the fact that it was not an impossible remedy to _obtain_. This was because Sherlock had not yet kissed John Watson.

And he knew he loved John. He’d taken that feeling apart and examined it years ago, when it was new and unexpected, and it was still there and wasn’t likely to go away any time soon, so he fit requirements.

The problem was if John was required to love him back. He had no data on that score that wasn’t tinged by irrational hope and therefore unusable. Oh, John _liked_ him, he was sure of that – why else would he have stuck around for so long? – but as far as wanting more than a brotherly flatshare went, given his history of previous romantic attachments...

No, irrelevant. That was a variable he couldn’t control, as much as he wished it to be otherwise. Move on.

What was the worst that could happen?

Well, the absolute worst thing was that it wouldn’t work, and John would be squashed by a lorry on his lunch break, after dropping his after-the-sell-by-date sandwich on the kerb.

Or – and this was a chilling thought – his kissing John was simply a continuation of the streak of extraordinary bad luck (witness how he'd proven instrumental with the antihistamines), and John would take it as an unforgivable assault on his heterosexuality and move out posthaste, leaving Sherlock with no way of knowing whether or not he did eventually get squashed by a lorry. This was likely, given how he’d reacted when Sherlock had seen him in the bath. (Sherlock was not above admitting that he’d enjoyed the view, despite being more worried about the state of John’s skull at the time, but the way John had so clearly _minded_ had stung.)

But if he did not kiss John and let the ill-luck continue, the lorry scenario might still happen, only it would be _worse_ because Sherlock hadn’t even tried to prevent it.

Sherlock realized he was oscillating on the pavement outside 221B Baker Street _like a client_ and swore. This dithering wasn’t like him, and it wasn’t doing anyone any good.

He stopped pacing and squared his shoulders. He was going to go in there and kiss John on the strength of a suggestion from a woman who had no cause to tell him the truth, because he had no better options at the moment, short of pitching John into a field of four-leaf clovers. If he had to try and wave it off with a fistbump and a beer afterwards, so be it.

*

Sherlock found John sitting on his bed, wearing a t-shirt and pyjama bottoms. He had a bit of tissue on his chin where he’d cut himself shaving, and it looked like he was trying to repair his phone charger with Sellotape.

“Oh, you’re back,” said John, at this point far too used to Sherlock barging in to complain. “You weren’t kidding when you said you’d be quick. How’d it go?”

Sherlock shrugged and sat on the edge of John’s bed. He hadn’t even taken off his coat. “Unhelpful. But Lestrade tells me the CPS has enough to prosecute her, provided that Grace Dunbar takes the stand.”

“She was the husband’s mistress, right?”

Sherlock nodded. “She’s sweet enough that any jury will find itself twisted around her little finger, but no matter.” He scooted closer to John, who moved his legs out of the way, looking quizzical. “John. I would have met you halfway with an umbrella, if you’d only asked. If I’d only known.”

“Sherlock, what are you--?”

“But since you no longer need an umbrella but are still having deplorable luck – I know that charger’s new, and it was functioning well this morning, wasn’t it? – this is what I can do for you.”

And he kissed John, quickly, before he could second guess himself.


	5. Chapter 5

Sherlock kissed him.

Sherlock.

Was kissing.

Him.

_Sherlock_.

Kissing him quite firmly, close-lipped, with one hand firm on the back of his neck as if he was trying to keep John from running away.

In a perfect world, this would have been brilliant. It was everything John wanted, minus the crippling uncertainty that came with having to make the first move.

But since it was manifestly _not_ a perfect world – as evidenced by various continuing armed conflicts, systemic racism, the state of the NHS, climate change, and _all of last bloody week_ – this couldn’t be happening. Or rather – because it _was_ happening, John couldn’t have worked the slightly chapped lips or the tense, awkward fingers at his nape into a hallucination – it was not possible for it to be happening for the reasons John hoped it was happening for.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew which way his luck was running. Hell, he hadn’t even been able to make tea for himself this morning, on account of the electric kettle shorting out and the stove making a suspicious hissing noise when he tried to turn it on. He couldn’t have gone from that to being kissed by the love of his life in the light of the noonday sun. And knowing Sherlock like he did, he could think of a very good motive for this sudden attack of unwarranted affection.

John pulled away from Sherlock, getting to his feet and moving back from the bed so that he was out of reach.

“Is this for a case?” he demanded.

“John, I–”

“Yeah, I bet you can explain, and, god help me, please do it fast. I need to know, Sherlock: is this for a case? Or are you collecting data for some experiment?” John drew in one shaky breath and tried not to look at Sherlock, who was wearing his shut-off-from-the-world expression but looked...hurt...underneath it. It was a jarring change from his usual offended-innocence-when-confronted-with-a-messy-experiment face, but that might have been because the latter hadn’t worked on John since he’d tried to sprout seeds of questionable legality in John’s favorite mug. “Because I’ll put up with a lot for you, you know I will, but I won’t stand for this.”

“It’s not for a case.”

“Well, what is it _for_ then? You can’t do this to me, Sherlock, you have no idea how fucking cruel it is. I’m not going to let you play with me like this, not when–” _Not when I’d do anything for you. Not when I’ve reshaped my life around you. Not when I would live and die and hoover and make the bloody tea at your word._ “–not when I love you.”

It just slipped out. Damn. There was no taking that back, then. John guessed that he had around three seconds before Sherlock told him that that was an unacceptable waste of emotion, and just hoped he’d have longer than that to collect his stuff and find another place to live.

He didn’t expect the shut-off look to slide away from Sherlock’s face, only to be replaced by an uncharacteristic mix of relief and surprise.

“So do I. That is to say, I love you. Utterly and beyond reason.” Sherlock held up a hand, not so much asking for silence as giving himself time to marshal his thoughts. He needn’t have bothered; the need to rearrange his worldview and his emotions had rendered John incapable of speech. “Here’s your explanation, John: Your luck has been getting worse ever since you broke Maria Gibson’s mirror. It was only a matter of time before it ran out entirely – fatally so, given how your accidents have been escalating, and sooner rather than later given the Work. I spoke with Gibson today to demand a solution, and she told me it would take true love’s first kiss. I believe she only meant to rile me up, but it wasn’t an entirely implausible cure. And it was one I was uniquely qualified to administer.” Sherlock gave John a small, rueful smile. “Perhaps I should have run the idea by you before acting on it, but I couldn’t risk you dismissing it out of hand.”

“So you just went and snogged me. You git. You bastard. You absolute fucking wanker.” John tried to stop the grin from spreading across his face, then gave up. The roller coaster ride from hopeless, incandescent rage had crash landed into giddy delight, and any attempt to keep it from showing on his face was like trying to hold a light in. “You wonderful man. I just might believe that.”

“Did it work?”

John sat back down on the bed and leaned in, tentatively putting his left hand on Sherlock’s knee. If he’d bothered to look, he would have seen that the marks from the mirror were already beginning to fade. “You tell me.”

The second kiss was much better than the first.

For the space of a moment, John worried that he was too eager, pushing too hard, all thought of technique or skill lost in the sheer delirium that came of putting his lips on Sherlock Holmes’s cupid’s bow mouth, but Sherlock was crowding into _his_ space, clutching the front of _his_ shirt as though he was the one who’d been dying for this to happen. It was so easy, so natural that it was hard to believe they hadn’t started this a lifetime ago, and all John wanted was to stay like this forever, kissing Sherlock, breathing him in, tasting him, losing himself so thoroughly it was a shame things like breathing mattered...

When they pulled apart, Sherlock had all but crawled into John’s lap, John’s grip was threatening to pop threads in that ridiculous coat, and John could feel Sherlock’s cock hardening against his stomach. It was quite warm in an excitingly unfamiliar way.

“What now?” he asked breathlessly, all too aware that Sherlock could hardly have missed how his own erection was pressing into his thigh.

Sherlock laughed, a warm huff that John felt on the side of his neck. “I didn’t plan this far ahead. Too many extraneous variables–”

John smiled, releasing the lapels of the Belstaff. He smoothed his hands over Sherlock’s shirtfront and Sherlock leaned into his touch like a pleased cat. “So we’re making this up as we go along?”

“Sounds about right.”

“Right. Good. Can I–?” John broke off, not entirely sure what he was asking. There was so much he wanted and so much unfamiliar territory, but for the immediate future, he would settle for getting Sherlock out of the coat.

“Please.” Sherlock kissed him again, urgently, messily, and John’s attempts to get rid of the Belstaff were greatly hindered by Sherlock’s tugging at the waistband of his pyjamas, which, since John was not wearing any pants, quickly turned into Sherlock putting his hands on his cock.

And that was nice. That was _very_ nice. More than nice in fact. It had John groaning into Sherlock’s mouth, had him trying to thrust his hips as much as he could with a lap still mostly full of consulting detective, had him gasping helplessly as Sherlock, who was not so much stroking him as exploring the length, girth and texture of his cock, curled his fingers around the shaft and swiped a thumb over the exposed head.

“Christ,” gasped John. He had his hands on Sherlock’s shoulders, under the coat, and he seemed to have forgotten what to do with them, knowing only that he wanted to keep holding on to Sherlock, grounding himself in the texture of expensive cotton over warm skin, because Sherlock had discovered he could work his foreskin over the head of his cock then back down again with devastating results. “God. _Sherlock_.”

“John. Let me?” Sherlock held John’s eyes for a long, long moment – good god, his eyes were beautiful – and John, pulse racing in his ears, nodded dumbly, because, yes, there was nothing in the world he wanted more than to let Sherlock Holmes get him off.

If he had been capable of expecting anything in his current state (that is, aroused out of his mind and still not entirely able to believe this sudden change in fortune), John would have expected Sherlock to finish him off with a hand job, and that would have been wonderful – the sight of those long, pale hands working his cock was intoxicating enough. Instead, Sherlock slipped off of his lap, and ducked his head down to put his mouth on John’s cock.

John moaned. John shouted. John positively writhed. And he sucked in breath after stuttering breath, reminding himself that he needed air, that he shouldn’t twist his fingers too tightly in Sherlock’s dark curls, but it was difficult to keep all that in his head when the world as he knew it had narrowed down to Sherlock’s lips stretched around his cock and the warm wetness of his mouth and that clever tongue pressed against the underside of the glans.

And Sherlock’s hands hadn’t stopped working. He was stroking John’s shaft, ending each downstroke with a maddening twist of his wrist, and his other hand cupped John’s bollocks just so, and it was perfect, and if he would only add a bit more pressure (he did) and move a little faster (he did that too), he would send John hurtling over the edge (he was so _close_ ).

“Sherlock, please – Sherlock,” John stammered, toes clenching and barely sane enough to remember that some form of warning would be...polite, if that was the unlikely word he wanted. “Fuck – I’m going – going to – going to come.”

Sherlock hummed then, a deep, pleased sound, with John still in his mouth, and John came utterly undone. Sherlock pulled off when he started to come and stroked him through the rest of his orgasm, careless of the semen that striped his face, his hand, and the front of the coat he still had on.

“Fuck me, that was brilliant,” said John when he could speak again. “You’re amazing, Sherlock, you know that? Bloody fantastic.”

As he spoke, he pulled Sherlock closer to him, because he couldn’t stand to _not_ be touching Sherlock, and he kissed him, licking into his mouth and tasting himself there. And he fumbled with Sherlock’s trousers, because Sherlock was still wearing a ridiculous amount of clothing.

Truth be told, he wanted Sherlock naked, wanted to see all of him, to map out his whole body with his hands and lips and tongue, but that could wait – time enough for that later, and the fact that there would be a _later_ made the blood sing in his veins. Right now, what mattered, what was deeply urgent was pulling out Sherlock’s prick – god, he was _hard –_ and closing one hand over it and letting Sherlock fuck his fist while he kissed him and making him chant John’s name in filthy, breathless syllables as he came.

It was as close to pure bliss as John was likely to get in this life, and he would have been content to lie like that, at an angle across his bed with Sherlock curled up at his side with _his_ legs still hanging over the edge of the mattress (he was still wearing his shoes).

Reality began to seep in as his pulse finally slowed, and John thought a wet flannel would be in order. But, feeling reluctant to fetch one as it would mean leaving Sherlock for even a handful of seconds, he stripped off his shirt and used that to clean them up instead.

Sherlock made an appreciative noise, fingers skittering up John’s chest and down John’s left arm, going especially gentle over the angry bruise left by last night’s fall. It was flattering, to say the least, and John felt himself blushing as he dabbed the shirt over Sherlock’s softening cock.

“You said ‘fuck me,’” murmured Sherlock, tucking himself back in his pants and finally wriggling free of the coat and dropping it onto the floor by John’s bed. (that would have to go to the cleaners later). “Was that an invitation?”

“If you like,” John laughed, the haze of hormones making him silly and honest. He put his arms around Sherlock, holding him close just because he could. “I haven’t given it much thought, but, with you, I’d be up for anything.”

“Hmmm.” That was the sound of Sherlock storing information for further consideration. John was about to ask what else was on his mind when the touches he had taken for post-coital clinginess turned into Sherlock taking his left hand and holding it up to the sunlight coming in through the window.

“See?” he said with some satisfaction. “The marks are gone now. I think the kiss worked.”

“Damn right, it did.” John kissed Sherlock’s sweat-damp forehead, then rolled over onto his back and grinned at the ceiling. “I’m the luckiest man alive now.”

**Author's Note:**

> June 21st 2020: Some things I forgot to mention:
> 
> Maria Gibson and Grace Dunbar (and, briefly, Isadora Persano) were taken from _The Problem of Thor Bridge._ I think some of you may have noticed this already. 
> 
> And credit must go where credit is due: the escalation of John's bad luck is there at all because my friend pushed me towards it. It would have been a very different and very stilted story without her having looked it over. 
> 
> Stay safe, everyone. Keep washing those hands!


End file.
